“It is like a country girl who comes to town wearing shabby gloves and shoes with a nice tailor-made gown,” Nan suggested. “Of course, after a while, when she has lived long enough, she will be quite finished in her dress, but now she still shows that she is young and a little provincial.”
“What a way to put it, Nan,” said Mary Lee.
“It is the way it impresses me,” returned her sister. “Didn’t you notice how raggety and taggety everything looked over here in our own country after Europe? How the fences and stretches of unkempt lots seemed so incomplete, and the poorer houses seemed little and mean instead of being picturesque, and how such things had a tumble-down raw sort of look? Of course I don’t say it will always be so, and in a short hundred years we shall be quite a sumptuous-appearing country, but as yet though we may be important looking we are not very picturesque. Think of those old, old palaces in Venice. Think of those castles along the Rhine, and all the ancient buildings that show history in every feature. Yes, I must say that though we look prosperous we also look painfully new.”
Mary Lee laughed. “You talk like a lecturer,” she said. “Well, at any rate if we are modern we are mighty comfortable, and that suits me.”
“And we do have better things to eat here than we get anywhere else,” put in Jean.
“Bound for you to discover that,” laughed Nan.
“At all events,” Mary Lee went on, “I’m glad to be back again, and I think we have been mighty comfortable and have had a jolly good time this past winter. I’m not kicking, as Carter says.”
“Oh, dear me, neither am I,” replied Nan. “I was only comparing, that was all. I am an American, stars and stripes, spread eagle, Hail Columbia American, if you will have it, though of course I do want to go back to Europe some day, but I don’t want to live anywhere but in this blessed old stuck-up country of ours, and south of Mason and Dixon’s line at that. ‘I’ll live and die for Dixie.’”
“I am glad Washington is south of Mason and Dixon’s line,” remarked Mary Lee with satisfaction. “It certainly was good of Maryland to hand over a piece of herself to make the District of Columbia for the seat of government.”
“Maryland has been a pretty good state anyhow,” Nan rejoined; “she stuck out, wouldn’t give in on that matter of the Western territory and she did a lot in all the wars. I am willing to concede a great deal to her though I stand up for Virginia first and foremost.”